Yesterday, I arranged a visit for a friend to the Mixed Reality Lab (MXR). MXR is run by Dr. Adrian Cheok and is currently part of the new IDM Institute in NUS.

Dr Cheok is one of the advisor for Thymos Capital LLP. He is pretty famous among the geeks as he was slashdotted for his Poultry Internet that allows you to pet a chicken over the Internet. (See picture of the chicken suit on the right)

He is now working on a body suit so you can hug someone.

Dr Cheok showed us all sort of stuff, like the Human Pacman, an augmented reality game that you play the Pacman in the physical world.His student also founded a company of the same name, MXR Cube Pte Ltd that made a pretty cool game called WizCube.

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Some of you might got my email over the weekend and some might have jumped the gun and blog about it (thanks). So I guess it is time that I blog about my latest venture, Thymos Capital LLP.

Thymos capital LLP is a business incubator focusing on Singapore interactive digital media startups. (that includes web 2.0). Our fund is a combination of private investors and public fundings.

Our target is to fund 100 seed-stage startups, S$50,000 each, over the next 3 years in Singapore.

S$50,000 may not a lot of money but it means a lot a young startup. More importantly, the value of Thymos Capital is not the S$50,000 but rather the mentoring and advises we can provide to the startups; Thymos Capital are made up of partners and advisers who have a track record of doing startups. As I told another startup yesterday, we may not be your executives but your cheerleaders and evangelists.

This is why I have been meeting with a lot of young entrepreneurs.

Now, some of you might remember me talking about why Singapore is not ready for web 2.0. Isn’t it contradictory?

In that blog entry, I lamented 3 issues – the first is access to funding for web 2.0 startups and that is precisely what Thymos Capital aims to solved. As for the mindset, thats why we don’t just come in with investment but take an active role advising and mentoring startups. As the for the last one regarding the lack of talents, that is unfortunately still true. Several folks have asked me to start a web 2.0 class for hackers. Worthy idea but I think I leave it to someone else to start one. (Let me know if you are doing that! I love to talk to you.)

Nevertheless, we are lucky to have found over 10 talented team of people who going to kick start Thymos Capital. I will mention them here later.

In the meantime, if you are an aspiring entrepreneur and think Thymos Capital can assist you, do drop me an email at james@seng.sg.

via TechCrunch

Neocons on a Cruise: What Conservatives Say When They Think We Aren’t Listening

“A few of these prominent liberals who are trying to demoralise the country,” she says. “Just take a couple of these anti-war people off to the gas chamber for treason to show, if you try to bring down America at a time of war, that’s what you’ll get.” She squints at the sun and smiles. ” Then things’ll change.”

Read the whole article. I wish it is fiction but sadly, it is not. Gosh, what do they feed them in the red states?

Amazing what you can do with 222,000 employees.

via Squarebrain

Relianace buying Yipes

mbitious Indian operator Reliance Communications Ltd. has furthered its international operations by striking a 12 billion rupees (US$297 million) cash deal to buy Ethernet service provider Yipes Enterprise Services Inc. (See Reliance Acquires Yipes.)

Expect to see more startups and consolations of Metro Ethernet players. ;-)

Mao Wei who is in Singapore for APNIC EC meeting. We usually meet overseas, like in Cape Town or Kyoto. I guess going to Night Safari with him is the least I could do to return the kind hospitality in JiuZhaiGuo and Xiamen.

(Yes, that is Gwen with us on the trip. Another story another time)